Thomas Strønen - Relations (2024) [Official Digital Download 24/96]

Norwegian drummer Thomas Strønen built Relations during COVID by emailing rhythm tracks to musicians around the world. The key to the project's success came from ECM founder Manfred Eicher, who suggested that Strønen only invite artists that he had never worked with before. The powerful result, recorded between 2018 and 2022, and in cities including New York, Oslo and Basel, is a dozen short, atmospheric duets. The ways his hitherto unknown partners reacted to his drum tracks and responded remotely make for fascinating contrasts. Memorizing Strønen's drum tracks, Sinikka Langeland added vocals and string tones from the kantele, a boxed zither that's the national instrument of her native Finland. Langeland's high, haunting calls add an urgency to the wonderfully titled "Beginners Guide to Simplicity" and in the more upbeat "Nemesis," she moves between picking and strumming over Strønen's busy cymbals and bass drum rumbles. American pianist Craig Taborn decided not to listen to Strønen's tracks at all before recording. In "The Axiom of Equality" he plays gentle, often fluttering chords over Strønen's aggressive outbursts of drums and cymbals. Recalling late-career Coltrane, American saxophonist Chris Potter is both playful and turbulent in the album's most confrontational track, "Ephemeral." Potter is more measured and lyrical, though no less assertive, in "Weaving Loom." The album's most successful tracks feature Spanish pianist Jorge Rossy, whose playing syncs instinctually with Strønen's love of space, timing, and atmosphere. Strønen, who recorded his drum tracks at Auditorio Stelio Molo in Lugano, Switzerland—his "dream room"—says he wanted his own playing "to be more direct and confronting" while retaining his well-known "focus on details and silence and breaks." Of the two tracks he performs solo, opener "Confronting Silence" is solemn while "Arc for Drums" slowly invokes a resonant melody with chimes.

TRACKLIST

1 Confronting Silence
2 The Axiom of Equality 5
3 Weaving Loom
4 Koyasan
5 Beginners Guide to Simplicity
6 Nemesis
7 Nonduality
8 Ephemeral
9 Pentagonal Garden
10 Arc for Drums
11 Ishi
12 KMJ



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